Analytics on Election Day

6 November 2012

MoveOn is catching some heat this week based on its use of Voter Report Cards. Whether it’s for being incorrect (today’s society is highly mobile and home ownership is at an all time modern low) or for revealing information voters thought was private (it’s not), it will be interesting to see if it lives up to MoveOn’s claims.

MoveOn (Oct 1, 2012 at 9:22 AM):

I think we may have just discovered the silver bullet that could help us win the whole election.

Two weeks ago, we ran a secret test of a new voter turnout method in a state primary election. There were 170,000 voters in the study. We just got back the results, and our new method was 3.7 times more effective, dollar for dollar, than the best techniques used by campaigns today. Take a look at this simple chart:

Making phone calls

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Sending mail

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Going door-to-door

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OUR NEW METHOD

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Let me put that in perspective: Normally, we’re delighted if we figure out something that gives us a 10% improvement. This test showed a 370% improvement.

For more details on how these cards came to be, check out The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg.